Strategic Chaos
by Twilit Storm
Summary: Inspired by Abyssal Angel's "New World, New Overmind" and rated T for language and violence. Real-Time Strategy games are all well and good-until the powers that be decide, for whatever reason, to throw you and your roommate into one. Well, at least having control of the Zerg is pretty cool-so long as they LISTEN when you tell them not to eat people...
1. Chapter 1

**Strategic Chaos**

**A/N: **Hello, and welcome to my first published fanfiction of FFNet. I am Twilit Storm, and I would like to start off by saying _no, not that Twilight_. For the record, helpful reviews will be accepted. Constructive criticism is fine. Crude and unhelpful flames will be remembered for when I conquer this mudball and am in a position to throw you to the Swarm. Got it? Good.

**A/N:** This story is somewhat inspired by Abyssal Angel's 'New World, New Overmind'-which was in turn inspired by East Bridge's 'The Zerg Swarm'. Though I will be differentiating greatly from these, so no worries.

Well, that's all this author has to note right now, so let's get on with it.

**BLANKET DISCLAIMER: **I do not own anything copyrighted, nor will I in the foreseeable future. If this changes, you will doubtless have seen me winning the lottery on television anyways. This disclaimer to be considered to apply to all chapters of this non-profit fanfiction. Because I don't want to screw myself over missing one…..

**Chapter 1: The Beginning**

**What, you thought we'd start elsewhere?**

~~_Perspective: First Person, ?~~_

Over the centuries of mankind's evolution, despite all evidence pointing to it being impossible no matter what assassin-based science fiction says, certain inalienable facts have passed into the what can only be described as man's Genetic Memory-knowledge instinctively available to us when it is needed. Man code, for instance, or the translation of a shotgun cocking to the phrase "You're screwed!" This is how, on waking in a strange forest, in a strange land, to the light of a _murderously bright_ strange sun, despite my severe headache and the fact I'd apparently blacked out and decided to nap in a forest, I knew that my migraine was nowhere near bad enough for me to be hungover. Of course, this did not stop me from groaning and throwing an arm over my face in self-defense; a migraine not being a hangover does not change the sun from being _murderously bright_.

That was about the time I realized that I had somehow wound up in an unknown forest instead of my 'Nerdtress of Solitude', or so my roommate calls it, and scrambled to my feet to look around. No path, no road, not even any kind of civilized engine noise-just grass, trees, and a little stream nearby. This I quickly ran over to, using the reflection to check myself over. Well, nobody had drawn on my face at least; same short dark hair, same blue eyes, same devilish good looks-if I say so myself. "Okay, Jack," I muttered to myself. "You are a gaming nerd in a strange land. What can you do to get the hell out of it?" I quickly patted myself down, idly noting that I was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a black T-shirt with red cuffs and collar as well as a purple Zerg symbol on it instead of the pajamas I went to bed in. Checking my pockets, I found them to contain but one necessity to my continued survival-breathable air. "Well, I'm screwed." I reached up to rub at my forehead. "No no, don't think like that, think happy thoughts." At least I haven't run into any lions or tigers or bears-oh, _fuck_ what was that squeal behind me-

What do you know, even a wimpy nerd like me can teleport up a tree with enough motivation. Good to know. Looking down, I saw the terrifying creature that had sent me up the tree.

It resembled a brown, chitinous manta ray, with the 'wings' consisting mostly of a few short 'legs' that slowly waved, a red membrane stretched between them. It had a pair of 'arms' ending in large spikes, with smaller ones allowing them to serve as pincers, and centered between a pair of small spikes at the head of the beast was small mouth and far too many red eyes. My first thought at seeing it was that it could probably take down the tree I was hiding in. Then, as my eyes trailed to the Zerg symbol on my shirt-which, I belatedly noticed, was was accented in the same red as the thing's wing membranes-before returning to the creature fluttering softly as it hovered a few inches above the ground. Then a bit of curiosity entered my brain, I recognized it as belonging the the thing-no, the freaking _Zerg Drone_-in front of me, and I had a whole new set of problems to freak out about.

~~_Perspective: Third Person, Jack's Tree_~~

"Jack? Hey!" Jack looked up from where he'd cautiously knelt by the Drone, which seemed rather happy to have his attention, as a familiar face shoved its way through the branches.

"Roger! I don't suppose you have any idea how the hell we got here?" He glanced down. "Or how I somehow acquired a pet Zerg?"

Roger stood at six feet tall, decently built, with dirty blond hair and bright blue eyes. As he walked into the clearing, he was wearing pretty much the same thing as Jack was, though a blue-and-black Dominion symbol was on his chest instead of the zerg symbol and he had blue accents. He was also wearing a rather surprised look. "…Dude, don't those things eat people? And, like, everything else?"

Jack rolled his eyes-though long hours of work had somewhat 'corrupted' his pseudo-jock roommate into the Ways of the Nerd, and he'd even played a few Starcraft II matches, Roger could still be somewhat clueless at times. "Well, he hasn't eaten me yet, and Drones aren't the fighters anyway." He frowned. "…Also, I think I might be in charge of him." Jack cocked his head to the side. _'He's dressed the same as me, but a blue Dominion symbol…'_ "Hey, did you get a pet too when you woke up?" Jack did not like where this was going. Well, okay, part of me was letting out gleeful 'squees' at the thought of where this was going, but that part of me doesn't get to make decisions after the convention incident.

Roger blinked. "Uh…No, but I got a robot stalker." Sure enough, an SCV straight out of Starcraft II hovered into the field, stopping behind and to the left of Roger. "Looks like those guys out of Starcraft."

Jack frowned. "…Okay, we may have a problem."

"What, aside from being lost in a freaky forest?"

"Yeah. Guys in charge of factions in real-time strategy games generally have to go up against armies."

Roger blinked. "….That IS a problem." Another pause. "What the hell do we do if we have to deal with an army?"

Jack reached up to rub at his head. "Okay, okay, don't panic, start with surviving first. Um, things we need to survive….food, like we know where to get that out here, water, okay there's a stream, good, and shelter. How are we going to build a…." He looked at Roger's SCV. Then his own Drone. And then he looked up at Roger and _smiled_. "Your new pet take requests?"

~~_First Person, Jack~~_

Jack and I smiled, watching as the SCV worked. It had taken a bit of walking to find a clear area big enough to build in, but once we'd found one I thought would work and given the order the SCV had dropped some kind of round thing that had expanded into the familiar 'building' frame out of Starcraft II and started running around welding and cutting as it worked to build a Command Center. As it worked, I gave my own Drone an appraising look. While I was certain the little guy could morph into a Hatchery-I felt a tickle at the edge of my brain saying that yes, it could and would be glad to, in a way that was quickly becoming familiar and natural-I wasn't sure if I needed resources of some kind to make more drones afterward, or if I had a stockpile already somehow. Besides, I wanted to figure out more about how to command one little guy before trying to make an army. Glancing around, I quickly came up with an experiment and knelt down next to the little guy as Roger turned to see what I was doing. "Okay, uh, Drone. Cut down the trees around here to make more room." The Drone squealed and ran off, eager to please.

Roger frowned at me. "What are you having trees knocked down for, dude?"

I shrugged. "Part of it's needing more room if we want to build more stuff here, part of it's seeing what the little guy can do before I try and get more of him."

My roommate-basemate now, I guess-nodded. "Well, I guess the first part's a good idea, and maybe the second is good too, but I don't know that the little guy is going to be able to knock down any-" There was a tremendous crash behind him. "….trees."

I looked over at the Drone, which had just toppled a rather large tree, and smiled. "Good boy!" It-no no, he-let out a happy squeal and continued with his work. "Now," I muttered to myself, "I just need to figure out what we're going to do with all the trees."

A couple hours later, me and Roger looked away from my Drone's fine work toppling trees to find the Command Center was finished, the SCV hovering behind it and looking almost smug. If I didn't know better, I'd think-

I jolted, eyes wide, and turned to look at Roger. "In the game, SCVs have people inside."

After a brief moment, Roger's eyes widened in recognition and we ran over. "Hey, uh, SCV dude! Open up your suit!"

It paused for a moment, as if confused, and then the suit opened up, revealing….an empty chair surrounded by controls. I frowned. "Well, that's weird. Might be a good thing, though."

Roger frowned. "How? I thought we were going to be able to ask for directions home from someone." He glanced at the SCV. "Oh, uh, close back up." The SCV closed up and turned to hover around the Command Center.

I shrugged. "Well, we should be able to build more SCVs out of the Command Center, right? I don't think we'd be able to build more drivers if we needed them."

Roger nodded. "Okay, yeah, I guess that is a good thing. C'mon, let's check things out inside."

Walking in, we found ourselves in a small room consisting mostly of a small pit of some kind, with several odd slots on the wall. Looking it over, I nodded once. "Okay, looks like that's where the minerals get dropped off, and those slots-" I gestured to the walls. "-must be where the SCVs are loaded." There were two doors inside, too; one right in front of us, next to the slot where things were deposited, and one to the side with an arrow pointing up.

Roger walked over to the door in front of us, fumbling around the frame for a minute before finding a button that opened it. "Wow, that's a lot of robot parts."

Sure enough, the room beyond was full of various mechanical arms, all sitting idle towards the ceiling. A few panels with glowing blue words and images were also present. "This must be where SCVs get built, then," I mused. "But if all the gameplay things the game Command Center does are on this floor, then…"

Roger nodded; he did catch on to what I was thinking sometimes, despite our differences. "The command stuff must be upstairs." Leaving the SCV manufactory, we went through the other door and up a small staircase to find ourselves in quite possibly the most advanced room I have ever been in.

Sitting in the center was a raised, round dais of sorts, which was decorated with a glowing hologram of the area around the Command Center as we entered. The side of the room we entered from was faced by an array of high-tech computer consoles, all dark and offline, and when I glanced over my shoulder I saw that the staircase had brought us up in front of a large bay window, through which the forest was visible.

"Awesome!" At Roger's shout, I turned-

-and damn near fainted at the site of my clumsy roommate pulling a C-14 rifle, right out of the hands of a Terran Marine and likely full of ammo _capable of tearing apart armored soldiers let alone puny meatsacks like me_ from a locker in the back. "Be _careful_ with that thing!"

Roger rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, you baby. I'm not that bad."

"Roger, what happened to your last dozen pets?"

He winced and carefully put the rifle back into the locker. "Yeesh, okay, good point."

Sighing, I walked over to him; he was at one of two lockers, both double-wide and each on opposite sides of the room and next to rather Spartan beds. The locker was fairly tall, and certainly too big to store just one oversized gun. "Anything else in here?" Stepping to the side a little, Roger opened the other locker door and we started going through it.

"Huh, more shirts." I picked one up and almost dropped it when it changed to match the one I was wearing. "_Gah!_ …Well, that's…. Handy, I guess." The shirt turned back into being just a plain black shirt as I put it back in the locker.

Roger poked a stack of neatly folded denim at the bottom left of the locker. "Pants, too." A small drawer was momentarily opened and then closed. "Yep, boxers. Well, clothes aren't going to be a problem."

I reached up and opened a compartment at the top of the locker. "Oh, look, MREs. I guess we're fed for…ah…a week, if we ration them." He glanced over his shoulder. "More if the other locker is stocked. …And I guess if we build another command center it might have the same stuff, so we might be good on survival."

Roger nodded. "Oh, yeah. …Hey, look!" He pulled out what looked like a big, army-style ammo can with an orange display on the side from the bottom right of the locker, directly under the rifle. "Ammo for the gun, apparently. That's good."

I frowned, looking up; there was one last compartment, above the gun and next to the MREs. "What's in here, then?" _'Please, God, Satan, and whatever else is listening, don't let it be grenades for this madman, I love him like a brother but he can't be trusted with a paintbrush let alone explosives…'_

Roger popped the compartment open, oblivious to my prayers, and pulled out…a sleek silver headset, complete with microphone. Phew, no explosives-though Roger seemed disappointed. "What's the point of this?"

We both jumped as lights on the wall between the bunks snapped on and a tinny, feminine voice answered. "Mark III Command Headset allows for tactical remote command of army units, and communication with similar command hardware within range."

Turning, my jaw dropped as I realized what I was seeing. A feminine metal torso, built into the wall via a mass of wires, and watching us with a neutral, glowing blue pair of eyes. "An Adjutant…"

Roger stared at it for a moment, then grinned. "Robot lady helper, sweet!" He cleared his throat. "Adjutant, make me a sandwich."

"Unable to comply."

I whacked Roger over the head. "Come on, man, there's more important things at stake here!" I turned to look at the Adjutant, clearing my throat. "Adjutant, where are we?"

"Unknown."

"…Okay, where were we…ah…three days ago?" I figured we'd just woken up here after going to sleep all night, but who knows?

"Unknown."

"…Um. Where is the United States of America?"

"Democracy based nation, located on planet Earth."

"Good. How far away and in what direction?"

"Unknown." Damn. "Interstellar navigation offline." …Oh, double-no, triple damn.

Roger chipped in. "We're not on earth?"

The Adjutant nodded. "Correct."

I turned to look at him. "Well, that's not good…"

He frowned. "No kidding."

I sighed. "Okay, we might be able to work with this. I mean, sure, we're way out here, but we have the Zerg and…kinda sorta the Terrans under our command between the two of us, right? Both of them can do space travel, so we might be able to just build our armies up and get back there. I don't know what it takes to build a Zerg Leviathan, but we should be able to work our way up to a Terran Battleship, unless….Oh, that might not be good."

Roger frowned. "What might not be good?"

"In SC2 multiplayer, you just have to gather resources and build the stuff. In Campaign, you have to go through specific missions where you're either given a unit or plot steps in to give you a schematic." I gulped. "Adjutant, are schematics for a Minotaur-class battleship available if we construct a Starport and Fusion Core?"

The Adjutant paused for a moment, working. "Battleship data not found." Before I could even voice how bad that was, it continued. "Fusion Core data not found. Starport data not found."

After a brief moment, I turned to look at Roger. "We might be screwed. And stranded."

He turned to look at me. "You think?"

A/N: And here we have the first of hopefully many chapters in which our intrepid heroes prove themselves…well, not very intrepid or heroic at all, so far. Perspective changes will be labeled as above, with First Person followed by whose and Third Person followed by, well, where. Bear with me a bit on the perspective, I'm fiddling with it a bit. And now, to help keep track of what they can and can't build, the Database section!

**Adjutant Database Updated:**

**Structure Completed: Command Center.**

**New Structure Available: Supply Depot. Serves as storage and allows more units to be maintained. Can lower into the ground to allow units to pass.**

**Zerg Genetic Archive Accessed:**

**New Structure Available: Hatchery. Basic Zerg structure, provides Zerg Larvae which can be Morphed into various Zerg strains.**


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: And here is Chapter Two of Strategic Chaos. I would like to thank you all for your many helpful reviews.

Unfortunately, I have not actually posted the first chapter as of this writing, so for all I know I didn't get any or got nothing but unhelpful flames, so I'll withhold thanking until I have actually read a review of some form.

There had better be reviews at some point after I actually post this, but for now I will settle for the words continuing to flow.

**Chapter 2: Where We Are**

**For What Good It Does Us**

~~_Perspective:First Person, Jack~~_

After arguing for some time over just what the hell we were going to do, we decided to, for now, just keep expanding our respective factions-whatever happened, we would probably be better off having an army and not needing one than the other way around. Besides, there was still a chance that we could get a Leviathan-supposedly all Zerg larva had the DNA of all possible Zerg mutations, right? On that note, we poked around the consoles in the command center until Roger finally muttered something about building a couple more SCVs and the Adjutant set the machinery downstairs to whirring with a simple "Complying."

Automation-isn't it grand?

As a way of rewarding ourselves, we had a couple of MREs and went outside; Roger to set the SCV to building a few Supply Depots-we hadn't encountered anything hostile yet, so he was going to go ahead and start on those before worrying about a Barracks-and I marched off to find my Drone and morph him into a Hatchery. Speaking of the industrious little fellow, the two of us had to contend with a veritable maze of toppled trees around the Command Center-maybe I should have told the little guy to move the trees off somewhere instead of just felling them where they were. Walking off to the far edge of the clearing, I called my Drone to a spot that was fairly clear and looked to be about big enough for a Command Center-my reasoning being that in the games all the main base structures looked about the same size. When the industrious little drone had settled in the middle of the area, I knelt down, stroked the little thing along the top of its head-eliciting a contented purring-and looked it in its many red eyes. "Okay, little guy, Morph to Hatchery." I stepped back as the little guy thrashed for a moment, tearing up the earth a bit, before it's outer skin bubbled into a translucent balloon of glowing green goo; the silhouette of the Drone was visible inside, swimming in frantic circles as the 'egg' pulsed and slowly grew. I stepped back, nodding at it; I wasn't sure how, but I knew it would be a couple hours yet before it hatched. With a sigh, stroked the little cocoon once more before walking over to join Roger.

Around an hour and a half later, I was strolling around the clearing, bored. The first Supply Depot had been completed-inspection of its interior revealed crate after crate of ammo, parts neither me or Roger could identify, and MREs, which was a good thing-and the second SCV had also finished, both of the workers being sent off to build more Supply Depots. Me and Roger had been reduced to wandering around satisfying our boredom-he had gone off to poke around the Command Center some more, while I found myself drawn towards my Hatchery. Based on size alone, it was almost complete-a little part of me almost let out a tear at my little drone being all grown up. This part was, of course, in the process of being whacked over the head by my non-sappy parts when I first saw it and the entirety of me froze.

Given the Starcraft stuff we'd seen, I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me so much, but it did anyways. It was arguably more dangerous to be in a room alone with than any Zerg. It looked to be made of roughly shaped green slime, a pillar moving on four small legs attached to its base with a slightly larger head, a black face carved into said head pointed at its quarry. There before me was the bane of all fancy builders in Minecraft-the Creeper. See, this is the part where I would have run. Almost all of my internal parts-even the sappy ones!-agree on this; running from a thing that'll explode if it gets too close to you? Brilliant! Do it! See, thing was, it wasn't headed for me. It was headed for my Hatchery. Even though I was certain a fully grown Hatchery would withstand a single Creeper blast-hell if I know how-some part of me, maybe the Overmind part now that I think of it, knew it wouldn't be able to at this point. So it was that a combination of worry for my little friend, pragmatic fear of being an unarmed general without an army in what was apparently freaking Minecraftia, and (MAYBE!) something like the Zerg version of paternal instinct drove me to pick up a stick and throw it, causing the Creeper's empty face to turn from my Hatchery and towards me. "Hey, ugly!" The thing turned to look at me and started slowly walking my way-still eerily silent. "Come get me!" _'Okay,'_, I told myself, _'NOW you run like hell.'_ "ROGER! GET THE DAMN GUN!"

What followed was what must have been ten minutes dodging through fallen trees while pursued by the Creeper, though any time spent stumbling through trees with a walking bomb after you is going to feel like hours. At that point I tripped over an exposed root, flipping over on my back just in time to see the Creeper walk up, start hissing-

-and be rammed by an SCV blasting full tilt into it, the left-hand pincers pinning the thing against a tree while the drill went into its head. After the thing stopped hissing, the SCV backed off and opened up to reveal…

"Roger, how the Hell do you know how to work that thing?"

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then shrugged before climbing out and answering. "Hell if I know. All I know is that I got in this thing and knew what I was doing." He paused, flicking a switch that apparently caused the SCV to go back to running itself. "Oh, and you're welcome. What was that?"

I pulled myself to my feet. "Well, we may be Starcraft commanders, but apparently we're in Minecraft. Go figure.

Roger blinked. "…Alright then, I guess that isn't that much weirder, which….is kinda not a good thing."

I couldn't help myself; I laughed. "Well, look on the bright side. Looks like we'll only have to worry about monsters instead of aliens, right?"

He nodded. "Yeah, and I haven't seen any of them all day except that one, so we should be good, right?"

I waved him off, habit taking over as I explained a gaming thing to him. "Oh, Minecraft monsters only spawn in the dark; everything but creepers burns up in the sunlight, so they only spawn...at…night…" The two of us stopped, then, before looking to the setting sun. "Uh-oh."

Roger laughed awkwardly. "Well, the best weapons Minecraft monsters have are bows, right? Maybe we'll be ok."

"Do you have the slightest idea how to close the front door on the Command Center so that the Zombies can't get in?"

He paused. "…I'm gonna go figure out how to load the gun."

I looked up at the sun with a grimace before another, happier event caught my attention; my Hatchery had completed! Running over, I had to admit that, despite it being essentially a giant organ sitting in a steadily-growing circle of very dark purple Creep, it looked pretty cool-though that may be my new Zergness talking. Poking my head in through the entrance, I noted that the interior looked essentially like a large 'stomach' of sorts, with a slightly raised pool of green liquid in the center of the room taking up half the available space. Though I noted that I could probably camp in here in some comfort-it was warm, and the floor was dry yet spongy-I decided that I would rather keep sharing with Roger-for reasons pertaining not so much to the comfort of a warm bed as the comfort of a locker with a frakking big gun.

Taking a moment to pet the Hatchery on my way out, I felt a somewhat stronger feeling of contentment like what I'd gotten from the Drone earlier on the edge of my perception. Wondering just how psychic I was, I decided to see if I could do any Psionic tricks at some point; hey, if Kerrigan can do it, maybe I can. Wouldn't be the weirdest that's happened to me over the past….damn, has it only been a day?

After a hearty dinner of cardboard-flavored MREs, I was awakened in the night by incessant pounding and groaning, very nearly yelling at Roger to let whatever poor girl that had decided he was worth a 'sleepover' go home already before remembering where we were. Roger was already up, clutching one of the rifles and staring at the hologram. Once I saw it, I stared a bit too. There was a horde of zombies banging on the door, with a couple of Skeletons shooting arrows from the trees; I could only think that it was a damn good thing loading the SCVs had automatically closed the door. As I watched the hologram, a giant spider crawled over the front window-turning to confirm this elicited a quiet yelp and drew Roger's attention. "Yeah, they've been doing that." He winced. "I've been thinking about just sending the SCVs out to do some cloud clearance, but that would open the door, and…"

I nodded. "Yeah, probably a bad idea." I hopped up and walked over to the window; I could see, clearly, my Hatchery. It had not acquired as much attention for some reason-I don't really know why-but a couple of skeletons were shooting occasional arrows at it. As I watched, an arrow scratched the now-sealed entrance, but when I reached out to it (damn, I wish I knew how I knew how to do these things) I could feel that the wound was already healing.

And then it occurred to me that, regeneration or not, the Hatchery was supposed to have armor comparable to Terran and Protoss in the game, and with all the pounding downstairs… "Hey, the monsters actually doing any damage?"

Roger frowned. "I don't know…"

The Adjutant turned itself on. "Command Center integrity at 72%, and dropping."

My head snapped to Roger. "That is NOT good."

He frowned. "The SCVs could repair it, but that would mean opening the door, and…"

I ran over to the computer consoles. "The game version can lift off, right? Where's that button?"

Roger ran towards the console, then stopped partway and turned towards the Adjutant. "Oh, duh! Adjutant, lift off the Command Center!"

We were almost knocked off our feet as the building shook. Looking at the hologram, I could see the zombies milling around underneath as the thrusters in the foundation lifted us off the ground; I couldn't help but feel a bit of vindictive glee as a few were burned in the process. Soon enough, we were hovering over all their heads. I let out a sigh. "Good thinking. We should be good until morning like this, I guess." I paused a moment to take in Roger's appearance and the rather large bags under his eyes; unlike me, he did not have the benefit of having stayed up entire weekends gaming, so I guess that was one survival skill I was contributing. "You know what? Give me the rifle and go to sleep. I'll keep first watch."

The next morning, Roger sent the SCVs out into the trees to make sure there weren't monsters hiding in the shade, and we put the gun away to walk into the beautiful sunlight after a breakfast of, for a change, Styrofoam-flavored MREs. After taking a moment to look around and be sure the area was clear, Roger turned to look at me. "So, wanna give me the grand tour?" He gestured toward the Hatchery, and I nodded.

"Sure, I need to get started anyways." We walked over, pausing only a moment at the edge of the Creep before I showed him into the Hatchery. "Well, this is the main living area, bedroom, and presumably acid bath-I haven't tested it, but I'm fairly sure it is acidic."

Roger frowned. "Uh, if this was here all night, shouldn't there be-GAH!"

He jumped about three feet in the air as a millipede-like Zerg larva nipped his ankle, and I laughed. "Yep, Larva!" I crouched down, a thought bringing the mischievous little larva and its two siblings to slither over to me. "Hello, little ones! Follow me." I walked them out, Roger following with a grumble.

"Why'd the little thing bite me?"

I shrugged. "Well, no accounting for taste, but he's apparently a wonderful judge of character." I looked down at them. "Alright, you two morph into Drones. Bitey, morph into an Overlord." Oh, not what I would normally start with in the game, but all things considered I wanted eyes in the sky ASAP. Besides, I kinda wondered what increased Supply in the game equated to-from the looks of things, Supply Depots supplied spare parts and ammo, which I supposed were necessary for an army of guys with guns and tanks, so I was curious. I stroked each one briefly as they ballooned out into tiny embryonic sacks.

Roger sighed. "Alright, I guess I'll go get that barracks underway."

I turned to look at him, frowning. "See if the other two SCVs can help build it faster; that's a research thing in the game, but it might work here. Either way, we probably shouldn't have them blowing all your resources on Supply Depots when we might need those marines."

Roger frowned. "Actually, maybe we do know how many resources I've got." He reached up and touched the button on his headset. "Um, Adjutant? How many resources are available for construction? …Whoa!" A holographic blue screen appeared in front of him, showing what looked like a point-of-view out of Starcraft-except we were visible on it, looking at the screen. Highlighted in the corner, just like in the Starcraft II UI, was a resource counter, though it showed more resources than Minerals and Vespene Gas-actually, though there were at least five resources, I didn't see either of those. Huh.

I studied it for a moment. "Looks like the Starcraft game; think you can give orders through it?"

Roger frowned at me. "How?"

That gave me pause; there wasn't exactly a mouse or keyboard, so… "Touchscreen, maybe?"

He reached up and tapped it the image of an SCV. "Hey, yeah, just like clicking it in the game." With some more tapping, he got all three SCVs hard at work building a Barracks nearby.

Looking over the area, I studied the boundary of the Creep and frowned. "I think we might need to figure out how to divvy up the land eventually." I gestured at the Creep. "I'm going to need more of this to build on eventually, and you can't build your stuff on it."

He frowned. "Okay, yeah." He shrugged and pointed in the direction of the Command Center. "I'll build that way, you build the other?"

I nodded. "Yeah, sounds fair."

An hour later, I watched as the Drones hatched, smiling as they came over to me. "Alright, you two, get to work clearing trees in that direction." I gestured toward the Zerg half of the….well, world, I guess. For now.

The two of them squealed and took off, so I turned to look at the Overlord egg; a quick mental 'touch' confirmed that it would hatch shortly, so I took the time to tell a couple of Larva that had spawned to morph into Drones while I waited. And then the Overlord hatched, and a hand went to my head as a bunch of….knowledge? Instincts? Something like that flowed into my brain. I instantly went crosseyed as the Overlord drifted into the air and I could somehow see the entire clearing from above, in addition to my own vision. After a few moments of this nausea-inducing insanity, I managed to adapt or compartmentalize or something and refocused to find Roger hovering hover me. "Dude, you all right?"

I nodded, shaking my head. "Yeah, just…well, apparently with the Overlord I see what it sees." I grimaced. "Took me a minute to adjust to having an extra pair of eyes-in-the-sky, as it were." I pulled myself up. "Hope I don't have that kind of problem with every new kind of Zerg, and…wait…" I blinked. "Why are they…?"

Before Roger could ask what I was about to say, he spotted the drones go by carrying a tree into the Hatchery. "Huh. Are they planning to build a house or something?"

I shrugged. "Come on, we'll find out."

Walking in, we were surprised to find the Drones passing us on the way out and the tree half-gone and dissolving further in the pool. "Well, that's…" I went cross-eyed again as the new 'Overmind' chunk of my psyche did something new. "I think… I think whatever gets used to make new Zerg just got added to, a bit." I glanced back out at the field; sure enough, the Drones had stopped and gotten one of the already-felled trees instead of cutting down a new one. Something I was about to order them to do, but how did they suddenly know…. I glanced up at the Overlord. Someone on the SC2 forums HAD once called them the Swarm's 'Floating Brains'. Apparently that held truer than I'd have thought. "Well, that's interesting. I think the Overlord being around made them smarter."

Roger looked up at it. "That's… You know what? I'm just not going to consider anything around here weird anymore." He sighed. "Let's go have lunch."

We retired to the Command Center for a meal of, again, cardboard-flavored MREs. My new favorite, at this rate.

A couple hours after lunch, we walked into the freshly built Barracks to explore. Some exploring revealed generous supplies of ammo, several beds, and more MREs, as well as a small room with a round platform and several mechanical arms on each side of the bottom floor, though we didn't find any actual…

"Where's the power armor?" Roger was, really, quite frustrated by the lack of it. He'd wanted to try a suit on. "I mean, yeah, I kinda figured that it'd just be the empty suits like with the SCVs, but come on!"

I shrugged; I'd been practicing the whole time carefully directing the Swarm's growth through my 'mental map'; I was already up to four drones, and had two more and another Overlord on the way, so I felt pretty good about my day. "Why don't you just have a Marine built? If they're going to be the empty suits, it's not like there's going to be any if you haven't built one."

Roger paused for a moment, then smacked himself-ah, how gratifying to see my work done for me-before tapping a button on his headset to bring up his own control map and selecting the Barracks. A moment later, we turned in surprise as one of the two round rooms lit up. Stepping into the doorway, we were somewhat awed to see the arms set to work assembling an empty suit of Power Armor in front of us-I couldn't help a flashback to the SC2 opening cinematic. As we watched, the under-construction machine was rotated to face us. As it was completed, there was the sound of an engine kicking on somewhere in its back, and the visor dropped down as it jerked to life. The Marine saluted before stepping past us, grabbing a gun off the wall, and stepping out into the wilds of Minecraftia. After a brief pause, Roger grinned. "Sweet!" He cued up two more Marines but, when he went for a third…

"Warning: Insufficient Iron." Adjutant's monotone rang out.

He frowned, kicking the dirt. "Aww. I wanted a bigger squad."

I shrugged. "Hey, you knew you only had so many materials." I frowned. "…Actually, we probably should have gone looking for caves before now."

He turned to look at me, clueless. "Caves?"

I nodded. "Well, yeah. If this is Minecraftia then, well, we probably get resources by mining. Plus, where else would we get Iron?"

After a brief pause, Roger nodded. "Okay, yeah, fair enough. Let's go find a cave then." He stepped out of the Barracks and walked into the woods, the Marines following at a wave of his hand. A few minutes later, he came back out of the woods. "Uh, which way is the nearest cave?"

I rolled my eyes. "I'll send the Overlord looking around a bit. And get the SCVs, too-if we're going to be mining, we'll probably want the guys with drills for arms."

The next half hour saw my Overlord finding a cave nearby, which I lead Roger and his force to-after having my Overlord head back to watch the camp, of course. We were taking the only fighters we had on this expedition, and there were still Creepers about. Studying the cave for a moment, I sighed. "Into the breach, then."

We walked into the cave in silence, for a few moments, before Roger spoke. "We probably should have brought a light."

I nodded. "Probably. Maybe we-" There was a series of clicks and all of Roger's units turned on inbuilt flashlights. "…Well, that's convenient." Something shiny to the side caught his attention, and I leaned in to study it for a moment. "…Okay, really convenient. I'm not sure, but I think this is iron."

Roger turned to one of the SCVs and pointed at the Iron. "Okay, uh, hop to it." The SCV revved up its drill and set to work on the wall, pulling away from the iron vein a moment later with a chunk of ore in its pincer and hovering out the door-to deliver the metal to the command center, I suppose. "Well, that's handy. Okay, you other two-"

I about jumped through the ceiling as we were interrupted by a groan-and, shortly thereafter, by the sound of three Marines opening fire on its source. Looking at the splatter of zombie now all over the walls, I suppressed the urge to vomit before turning to Roger. "I think we need to either light this place up or set up some kind of escort." I paused to glance around. "I don't see any coal around or, come to think of it, know how to make a torch, so I think we'll have to set up an escort."

Roger nodded. "Think it'll be safe to leave them mining all night if we set up a guard?"

I paused for a moment, considering. "…I think it should be fine. I mean, it's Minecraft-the most advanced weapon around is the bow and arrow. …Well, okay, outside of the Nether, I suppose…" I blinked. "…Actually, I'm a freaking Zerg overmind. Maybe I can do something with the monsters around here." I turned to regard the zombie for a moment. "Zombie zerg….worth a shot."

Roger pulled up his minimap and started studying it; I idly noted that it had expanded to show places we'd been through as greyed-out areas, while the area around his units was lit up-about like how I saw everything the Swarm saw, then. "Okay, so….have this guy stay here-" He pointed to one of the Marines on the map, though it was already in place so he didn't tap it. "And the other two guard the base."

I frowned. "If this is going to go on all night, there's going to be monsters between here and base too, you know."

He nodded. "Okay, yeah, point, so….one of them patrol between? That'd work. …Uh, if I can actually do that…. No, wait, here it is." Two of the Marines walked out of the room. "Oh, and the other SCVs mine." I nodded in satisfaction as the SCVs set to work. "Well, looks like both of us have an economy going, at least. Let's head back." I spared a glance for the remaining Marine guard. "I really doubt a bow is going to punch through armor, but I'm not that durable."

I watched out the window, a while later and eating another MRE, as Roger eagerly set about setting a few newly created Marines to reinforcing the patrol route to the mine and manning a Bunker one of the two new SCVs built. As I looked up to consider what was now a Zerg swarm consisting of two Overlords and a handful of Drones, I found myself really believing that we could do this.

And then I winced a grabbed my head as a Creeper blew up one of my Drones and I was hit with some kind of backlash. "Gah! Okay, losing units hurts. Good to know." I rubbed my forehead and glared at the world for daring to interrupt my optimistic moment. "Okay then, looks like it's time to start up my own security." With a theatric wave of my hand, one of my Drones moved to the side of the Hatchery and changed into the telltale cocoon of a growing Zerg building, and I turned to look at Roger. "Hey, Rog? Mind putting some Marines over by that cocoon to guard it? I'll be able to loan you some guard dogs in the morning…"

A/N: And here we have the second chapter. Don't worry, we'll be finding more excitement then 'Build This' soon, and focus will switch more to the Zerg expansion than Terran as time goes by. Now, databases!

**Adjutant Database Updated:**

**Structure Completed: Supply Depot**

**New Structure Completed: Barracks. Allows the construction of Infantry units. Can be upgraded optionally with a Reactor, which allows for twice as many Marines to be constructed at a time, or a Tech Lab, which allows for the creation of more advanced Infantry such as *ERROR: DATA NOT FOUND* or *ERROR: DATA NOT FOUND*.**

**New Unit Constructed: Marines. Suits of power armor far stronger than the average man, equipped with C-14 Impaler rifles.**

**New Material Gathered: Iron. Can be processed into many different alloys at the Command Center, and is stored in Supply Depots until needed for constructing units.**

**New Structure Available: *ERROR: DATA NOT FOUND***

**Zerg Genetic Archive Accessed:**

**Structure Morphed: Hatchery.**

**New Structure Morphing: Spawning Pool. Allows morphing of Zerglings from larva, as well as Queens from Hatcheries.**

A/N: Gee, I wonder if that error in the Adjutant Database is going to give Roger any trouble? Golly, I hope there aren't errors like that in the Zerg Genetic Archive. Hehehehehehehee…..

Also, Jack gets headaches when his Zerg die, since he's got a whole psychic swarm-link going on, and Creepers do what they do best and spoil someone's day.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Hello and welcome, dear reviewers. I have now, as of this writing, received a grand total of FOUR reviews. Woot! With any luck, that will be but a drop in the bucket in the coming chapters, but thank you all for the first drop!

And now, our intrepid heroes discover that there is a flaw with having only Marines in a Minecraft game. What is that flaw? Well, you'll see shortly. Spoilers.

**Chapter 3: Nature of the Game**

**But First, Some Endings….**

_~~Perspective:First Person, Jack~~_

I should have realized the problem earlier, in retrospect. I really should have-though, come to think of it, the same has likely been thought by most people of most problems. Hindsight.

I had gone to sleep for the night-an interesting experience, as I still got a kinda muddled sense of things through the Overlord even with 'my' eyes closed-when I heard the shrieking start and jerked awake. Even as Roger fell out of his bed with a yell, I was running towards the hologram to see what the problem was-

Even before I got a good look at that, my Overlords helpfully pointed it out, and I swore. "Endermen!"

Roger untangled himself from his blankets and walked over, frowning. "Okay, what are-eck, those are creepy." The endermen were essentially tiny torsos with long, thin limbs and a normal-sized head with glowing purple eyes. Pretty much what I'd thought they were. Having been spotted by the Marines, they were also being fired on-but therein was the problem. Roger whacked the side of the holotable. "Gah, what's wrong with this, you'd think they were teleporting…"

I winced. "They are; that's what Endermen do. They just walk around, teleport at random, scream and attack if someone sees them…" I reached up to rub my forehead. "And teleport every time a projectile is used against them."

Roger blinked. "That…." He looked down at where around three-you try counting randomly teleporting cats sometime-Endermen were flickering around and being fired on by Marines. Unless another Zombie, Skeleton, or Spider showed up, I doubted they were going to do anything but annoy Endermen tonight. "…That would be so cool if it was on our side."

I actually paused at that, considering. Kill them, drag them into the Evolution Chamber, and….teleporting Swarm! Oh, look, I need an Evolution Chamber for that, it would be nice to consciously know these things, but still-they could teleport in as a rapid response force if a hive cluster was under attack, or teleport into an enemy base and-

Oh, _shit._

I turned to Roger. "Have them stop firing on the Endermen!"

He turned, frowning. "Why? This is kinda neat to watch."

"We'll be getting a real close look if they teleport in here, won't we?" Roger turned and started yelling orders at the Adjutant while I closed my eyes and reached out towards my new structure; it had been hatched for a while, and resembled nothing more than a pool of bubbling green ooze surrounded by teeth. Smiling, I reached out to the three Larva waiting inside the Hatchery, and felt a burst of excitement from them before they dashed out and threw themselves into the Spawning Pool. _'Odd, they just morph in front of the Hatchery in the games. Well, I suppose further hive clusters will have to get their own Spawning Pools, then…'_

Roger shook my shoulder. "Okay, the Marines are holding fire on the Endermen, but a couple of them are still pissed off. How do we kill them?"

I turned to look at him. "Well, they only dodge ranged stuff, so they'd have to be attacked from up close."

Roger turned to look at the holotable. "Okay, so build some SCVs…"

I actually laughed at that. "Good thinking, but I have something better on the way." I cocked my head to the side, checking on what was coming. "A lot faster than the Drones, too. Go figure."

20 minutes later, I was treated to a scene of true beauty as six raptorlike Zerglings burst from the Spawning Pool and charged, digging their tusks, blades, and teeth into some very surprised Endermen. After only a couple of minutes, the area was clear, and I called my Drones up from where they'd been burrowed at sunset to gather up the freshly killed Endermen-as well as the not-so-freshly scattered Zombies and such; I wouldn't want to waste biomass, and apparently the sun burned monsters away whether they were dead or not. Also-hey, free Biomass! It's not like Roger has any use for it, right? With a sigh, I reached out to one of my Drones; so long as my creepy subconscious (Overconcious?) zergness had told me what I needed to edit the Swarm, I supposed I might as well get another building morphing. _'Drone, Morph to Evolution Chamber-'_

**_"!?"_**

…Son of a bitch, that HURT. For the second time in a far too small period of time, I found myself looking up at a worried Roger. "Okay, I'm fine, I'm fine…ow, though."

He leaned back and scowled as I pulled myself to my feet. "Stop DOING that!"

I scowled right back. "Well, sorry, apparently there's some kind of backlash when the Swarm doesn't understand an order."

He frowned. "…What was the order?"

"…I tried to morph an Evolution Chamber. I kinda figured it was what I needed to make use of the Endermen, and…" I frowned, walking over to the window and leaning against it. "…What the Hell is wrong with my Swarm that it can't morph one of the basic structures?" I frowned at my little hive cluster. If it was going to expand at all to what I'd consider using in just the Starcraft games, let alone a vital survival tool that would eventually grow a way home.

Roger frowned. "Okay, uh… huh. That isn't good, is it?" He frowned. "…Well, I don't think there's much we can do about it for now." He nodded. "Yeah, probably best to figure this out in the morning."

I glanced over at him. "Alright, just one last problem then. Build an Engineering Bay, would you?"

He blinked once, then shrugged. "Sure. Adjutant?"

The AI twitched once. "E-E-Error. Data not found."

I sighed. "Yep, we're stuck with the basics." I reached up to rub at my forehead. "We are SO screwed if any kind of serious threat shows up…"

The next morning, after we'd had some breakfast and taken turns in the Barracks' showers, I sat down outside the hatchery and scratched at one of the Zerglings' heads; really, for all their status as vicious killing machines, they were more like affectionate puppies in attitude.

Unless something looked at them wrong, like that Creeper. Ick.

At any rate, I was taking a moment to figure out what we were going to do next while Roger was doing….well, something in the Barracks. _'Okay, so apparently we can't advance our factions to the point of having something resembling vehicles, let alone spaceflight. …We are in a video game. How do we advance?'_ I reached up to rub at my forehead. _'Okay, say we were in the Starcraft II Campaign. How would we unlock new stuctures and units? Complete the appropriate missions. But there aren't appropriate missions here, or any kind of enemy beyond what's standard for Minecraft…..'_ I nodded once, standing up. _'If we can't advance in one craft, for now we advance the other.'_ "Hey, Roger!"

I was only moderately surprised when he poked his head out of the Barracks and it was ensconced in a Marine's helmet. "Yeah?"

"We can't go further in one game, so let's start the other. Go punch a tree, or something!"

It had turned out that I could not actually punch a tree down, despite this apparently being Minecraft. Roger had managed to, but that was probably the rather large amount of Power Armor he was wearing, and afterwards we decided to just have the Drones pile up a few for construction. After this, we quickly chatted over what other Minecraft things we could possibly do, and a couple of Roger's growing group of SCVs was ordered to gather Cobblestone while the two of us watched them work. After a brief pause, Roger flipped up his visor. "Minecraft is a lot easier with the hired help."

I snorted, taking a drink from a water bottle. "Yeah, everything is better with Minions." I paused, noticing something on my 'Over-Vision'. "Hey, how did you get Marines in a different color? I mean, I guess the green is far better camouflage, but they're still hardly stealthy…."

Roger blinked. "...Other color? Dude, I don't even know how I added the fancy highlights." He tapped the gold accents, standing out against the standard blue of his own Marine armor. "If there's green marines out there and your Zerg aren't going colorblind, they aren't mine."

I blinked. "Ah. Must be someone else's, then." At that thought, we both froze.

Roger turned to look at me, slowly. "Someone else?"

I leapt to my feet. "Yeah. If we get in contact with them-whoever it is could even have a way back home-"

Roger grinned. "Well, where are they?"

"They're right over-DOWN!" I threw myself behind the woodpile as a quartet of green-armored Marines entered the clearing and opened fire on us.

Taking only a few scratches to his armor, Roger was quick to follow. "Why are they shooting at us!?" He winced at something I couldn't hear. "Ok, Adjutant just said something about them being Rogue Elements-what-"

"I think I figured out what happened to all the stuff the Adjutant just doesn't know how to do!" _'And probably where my Swarm's missing strands and sequences are, too!'_

"Well, what are we supposed to do about it!?"

I took a deep breath. "Are you or aren't you in charge of your own Marines? In fact…" As there was a lull in the enemy fire, I rolled out from behind the woodpile and swept my arm in their direction. "Attack! For the Swarm!" The entirety of my force of Zerglings, a full dozen of them after a day of expansion, moved from where they'd been watching the Drones work and tackled the rogue Marines from the side; only one turned in time to get off a few shots before being reduced to so much shredded metal.

After a few moments of nothing, we stepped out of cover and ran over to examine the…'remains', as it were, a group of Marines moving to join us for security at a quick command from Roger. Leaning over to examine one, Roger flipped open the visor of a mostly-intact visor. "Yep, empty suits like mine."

I let out a sigh. "Good." I glanced up to one of my Overlords-I was up to three, now-and gestured in the direction the Marines had come from. "Okay, my Overlord will track down wherever they came from. In the meantime, we need to figure out what we're going to do about this."

Roger raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, do about it?"

I turned to look at him. "Remember what I said about unlocking buildings? Well, I'd say these 'Rogues' are probably what we have to beat to get new stuff." It made very little real-world sense, but this? This was video-game sense-the kind of sense I was lord and master of. "Besides, whatever is in charge of these just tried to kill us, and I doubt they can't build more-if they don't have more already-for a second attempt." Yeah, there was that too.

An hour and a half later, we were looking over a small complex of Terran structures that was probably the 'rogue' base.

Well, I was looking it over with Over-Vision while Roger examined it via a crude sketch I'd drawn in the dirt. Still, looking at it I couldn't help but notice…. "There's no Command Center. A couple of Barracks, a few bunkers, and what looks like an Engineering Bay, but no Command Center."

Roger frowned at it. "Weird. Maybe it's just an expansion?"

I frowned. "Maybe….Someone or something threw us in here to play a rousing game of Starcraft meets Minecraft. No idea why the hell someone would do that, but maybe if you can break physics like that you get bored easy." Which was a scary thought-someone who could break physics and was easily bored looking to us for entertainment-but there were more imminent and shooty problems to deal with.

Roger himself didn't look too happy about that either. "Yeesh. Let's hope whoever it is plans to send us back if we win."

I sighed. "Either way, we have other issues." I looked over my 'Over-Vision' map once more. "They might know we're coming. I think the Barracks are building something, and the SCVs look to be building…" _'Shit!'_ "Anti-Air defenses." My Overlord floated by over us; I certainly wasn't going to leave him within range of Missile Turrets. "Well, at least we know someone has a working Engineering Bay."

Roger sighed. "Okay, so they have turrets that can rain missiley doom on us. How do we get by that?" He looked back at our combined force of Zerglings and Marines, idly reaching to check the rifle he'd brought for himself. "These guys aren't gonna stand up to that kind of firepower."

I shook my head. "I'm no expert on how real ones work, but in-game Missile Turrets are anti-air only. What I'm more concerned about is that we don't have Over-Vision coverage anymore; that was kinda all the strategic mojo we had going for us."

Roger took a deep breath. "Well, nothing for it but to attack anyways, right?"

I sighed. "True enough." I glanced down at the crude dirt map I'd drawn up for Roger's sake; a pale echo of the vast amount of data I'd been getting from my eyes in the sky. Still, I was good at Starcraft, and they only seemed to have so many Marines…. "Okay, here's what we do." I sketched a pair of arrows in the dirt, looping around towards the sides of the enemy base before turning inwards. "The bunkers are between our bases, so we come in from the sides. You hit from the right, I hit from the left, with luck their Marines won't be able to all get into bunkers." I looked up to Roger, then glanced at our assembled forces. _'No way we're going to get through without severe losses, and based on what happened when that Drone was creeped….this is going to HURT.'_

Roger nodded. "Okay, what's the signal?"

I blinked, looking down at my map. "What do you mean, signal? Just circle around that way and attack, I'll go the other way and do likewise."

He frowned. "But how are we supposed to coordinate without a signal?"

"We each have a force of basic infantry. They have a force of basic infantry. We do not need more coordination than killing them and not each other!"

"Come on, man-"

I sighed. "Alright, alright. The signal will be…" I paused for a moment, then nodded. "The sound of enemy gunfire. Get into position, then charge when they start shooting."

He saluted-which made a rather loud clanging noise considering the augmented metal muscle he was still wrapped in. "Sir, yes sir!" At a wave of his hand, his Marines followed him off into the trees.

I sighed and turned to look at my Zerglings. "There are days I wonder if whacking him upside the head isn't the best thing that can happen for his brain." I and my Swarm moved around to the other side of the base. All the better to send the 'signal'.

As my Zerglings swarmed over the surprised enemy Marines, I could not help but feel that this was a bad idea.

This probably had something to do with the fact that, well, I was moving from cover to cover behind them so that I could keep an eye on the proceedings; I was _not_ sending my Swarm in without eyes on the situation.

…Okay, so perhaps this was a bad idea. Still, glancing over my cover I could see the blue of Roger's forces advancing from the other side; glancing around momentarily, I finally determined that the bunkers towards what I'd been thinking of as the 'front' of the base were empty, and would provide much better cover then the scrapped half of a marine I was hiding behind, so I let out a sharp whistle directed at Roger's troops. "Rog, meet me in the Bunker!" I hopped cover as the nearest Marines were swarmed by my Zerglings and ran into the nearest bunker, ducking in before I could garner the attention of any enemies, noting Roger running towards the same one out of the corner of my eye as I ran. A few moments later, I threw myself back out of the Bunker, nearly hitting Roger, as it turned out I had been only half right-there were no Marines in the bunker. Even as I rolled out of the way, I realized what I was dealing with and just how screwed I might be.

The two of them stood head and shoulders above the Marines. Their armor was thicker and bulkier, with a wider chestplate and truly massive backpack-like extension. Their helmets were smaller than the average Marine's, and had two glowing orange eyeholes in place of a big visor. The one facing Roger was done up in mostly orange with yellow accents with faction-green shoulder plates; it's arms each ended in two short barrels-each of which were busy trying to hit my fleeing roommate with jets of flame as he retreated and bounced bullets off the Firebat's heavy armor. My foe was colored in black with faction-green accents.

Sadly, the Marauder's arms ended in the larger single barrels part of my brain idly recognized as Quad K12 'Punisher' grenade launchers; the rest of my brain was busy screaming about how much harder it was to get the hell out of range of that and inventing an entire new language of swears to pay much attention to it. "Son of a _bitch!_" I threw myself out of the way as it fired, making a small crater where I'd been standing, before rolling to my feet and running around the back of another Bunker. "Okay, okay, Zerglings-to me!" There was a brief moment wherein nothing happened. Poking my head around the side of the Bunker, I noticed that our forces were all hemmed in by a number of Marines supported by another kind of enemy-this in lighter armor colored mostly white with faction accents, carrying a shield with a cross on it and apparently healing their allies with a ray from what looked like an oversized syringe of glowing green…_something_ affixed to their arm; Medics. And with that kind of support on the Rogues' side, it didn't look like our troops were going to be able to help anytime soon.

A moment later, I dove from behind the bunker as the Marauder turned the corner and fired twice, running for the trees as it lumbered after me again. "Oh, dammit-okay, Marauder. Weaknesses….massed infantry-_holy shit, that was-_focus, focus; enemies with more range than it has, kill it before it can shoot at them-relatively frail, being infantry, but that's a comparative thing-I am _so_ screwed." Okay, think. This is, is…apparently a kind of Starcraft II campaign. Okay, so that would make me…Kerrigan-Equivalent. I MIGHT be Psionic, if our mystery omniscient benefactor intended for me to be a kind of alternate Kerrigan, but how would I know how to-

The Over-Conscious part of me knows what everything else in the Swarm can do automatically once I ask.

_"Over-Conscious, available abilities to Overmind?" _

I was damn lucky not to be killed for the moment when it was giving me information; ask it consciously, and apparently I get a _loud_ answer. **_"Overmind Abilities available: Accelerate Metamorphosis-10 of 100 energy, allied Zerg units morph faster for short period of time within limited area-of-effect. Accelerate Regeneration-40 of 100 energy, allied Zerg unit regeneration 500% for short time. Psionic Infestation-X of 100 energy, target enemy is converted to controlled ally via psionic technique; necessary energy for success varies depending on Psionic strength of enemy, insufficient energy in technique or overuse of energy may temporarily disable Overmind."_**

Well, that was…ow. But good to know. I rolled out of the way of yet another grenade and grimaced. "Only one power of any real use, and it doesn't sound like I can risk using less than I can call on." It would be a bad idea to try the bare minimum and be 'temporarily disabled' in front of the Marauder, but…. I took a deep breath and pointed a hand towards the Marauder. "Here goes everything." I reached back down along the line the Over-Conscious used to send me information; no idea how I knew where it was, let alone how to reach for a psychic thing, but I did. "**Psionic Infestation!**" A blast of crimson light shot out of my hand with enough recoil to knock me flat on my ass.

~~_Perspective:First Person, Roger~~_

It was around the second time I got tagged by the giant thing-I think it's called a Firebat, or Hellbat, something like that-that I realized game or not I probably didn't have extra lives.

It was an assumption I'd kinda had without knowing walking in-I guess finding out you're in a video game does that. I sure felt like a game hero, wearing power armor and carrying a massive rifle. Still, I found myself thinking that I might be screwed-and if I was, Jack probably was too; I was the guy good at this physical stuff, and all.

…And, yes, a suit of power armor and a frakking big gun, so…

Frustrated, I jumped back further from the lumbering whatever-bat and fired again; when I actually managed to hit it, most of my shots bounced off, but if I kept firing long enough then-

And I'm out of ammo.

With a scream of frustration, I threw the empty rifle away from me; kinda stupid, but I never figured out how to reload it anyway. "Gah! What am I supposed to do to kill this thing, pull a missile launcher out of my ass?"

Something chimed in my ear and my visor lit up with a red diamond over the bat-thing before Adjutant's voice came on. _"Command confirmed. Targeting missile launchers."_ My suit locked up and I heard a pneumatic _hiss_ to either side of me as something in the armor's oversized shoulders moved.

"Wait, I actually have missile-" There were three or four simultaneous _THWOOMs_, and I had just enough time to see four small missiles streak towards the bat-thing before it exploded and I was knocked on my heavily-armored ass.

After just laying there staring at the sky for a few moments, I sat up. "…Holy SHIT! I am AWESOME!"

As usually happens after I say that and/or blow something up, Jack appeared out of nowhere to whack me over the head.

_~~Perspective:First Person, Jack~~_

As the Marauder was struck by my attack, I had a moment to appreciate that I wasn't the only one bowled over by my attack, at least. The heavy infantry armor staggered to its knees, staring forward at nothing as red energy crackled over. Even as I watched, my own red faction colors bled into its green accents until they were no more and the blank shoulders were filled in with a crimson Zerg symbol, like the one on my own shirt. Finally, the energy stopped crackling and I flinched at the incredibly out-of-place sensation as it became part of my Swarm.

After taking a moment to ensure it wasn't going to do anything without my say-so, I pulled myself to my feet and looked around for Roger. When I found him, Marauder in tow, he was laying on his back in front of a large crater surrounded by shrapnel; as I watched, four innocuous-looking tubes pulled in and his shoulder armor folded over them. After a brief pause, he sat up and stared at the crater before speaking. "…Holy SHIT! I am AWESOME!" As Roger having much of an ego would never end well-and it was tradition for when he blew things up, harkening back to the dark days of teaching him to cook-I whacked him upside the head.

It was a surprisingly effective whack, considering the helmet he was wearing, and he pulled himself to his feet before turning to pout at me. "What? I am!"

I snorted. "Dude, you're the awesome one?" I gestured at my new Marauder. "Check out what I did!"

Roger stared at it for a moment. "Dude, that is SO awesome if it's permanent."

I grinned. "It is." I frowned. "…Feels really weird, though-the hive-mind isn't meant for inorganic stuff, and this guy is basically a robot."

Roger glanced around for a moment before walking over and picking up his gun. "In honor of my pledge to not think anything is weird, I'm going to not pay attention to that sentence." He smiled. "So! How are things going for the troops, then?"

Cursing, I whirled to look at the battle; it was definitely turning in our favor, but while I was distracted trying not to die I'd been losing Zerglings _fast_. I pointed at the fray. "Marauder! Kill the medics, then anything else not ours!" The Marauder stomped off, raising one arm and firing on the medics clustered on our side of the Rogues. They fell easily, and the remaining Rogues were quickly overwhelmed.

As soon as all the enemy units were captured, my Zerglings followed their earlier orders to return to me while Roger's Marines scattered without orders-two each charged into the Rogue Barracks, three more into the enemy Engineering Bay, while the rest spread out around the area. As my Zerglings finished making sure I was okay and moved to sniff at their new Marauder friend curiously, I turned to look at Roger. "Uh, Rog-"

He shook his head. "Beats me, man. They just-gah!" A holographic screen appeared in front of his face, showing the Adjutant's twitching face.

_"Accessing rogue Adjutant. Overriding security protocols. Working. Working. Security protocols overridden. System reset. Corrupt data restored. Control reestablished."_

Roger reached up to scratch at his…er…helmet. "What's all that about?"

I stared at the Rogue base around us. "Well, this place just turned from Rogue green to your shade of blue. Take a guess."

Some time later, the two of us were studying the enemy base on the holomap. I pointed at one of the Barracks. "Yeah, that explains the Medics, Firebat, and Marauder-this one has a tech lab. …The other has a reactor, which would explain why there were so many of them-that one was spitting out twice as many Marines."

Roger nodded. "Naturally."

I sighed. "You only understood about half of that, didn't you?"

"Naturally."

I facepalmed. "Whatever; I'm fairly sure you're getting a crash course on this stuff anyways." Or dying horribly, but that's been a risk whenever he's made food, so… "I guess I'm hunting Zerg tomorrow."

He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

I shrugged. "Well, not much choice if I want to expand more. Besides, if there's a chance of random enemy tanks, I'm going to need a bit more muscle than the Zerglings. …And Marauder." I sighed. "Well, better head back; only a few hours left in the day, and I wanted to try for a Queen and some Spine Crawlers today."

Later that night, Roger and I were reclining on our respective bunks, looking out the window. After a few moments, I nodded at the hologram of our base on the table. "Not a bad day's work. Find out we got powers of our own, get an Engineering Bay…."

Roger nodded, sipping from a bottle of water. "Not to mention the construction. It's probably gonna be handy to have a nearby Engineering Bay."

I glanced at the nearly-complete structure next to the Command Center. "Yeah, we should check that out in the morning. If the Evolution Chamber has so many more options than 'improve this, that, or the other thing', we've probably got a bit more latitude with what the Engineering Bay can do." I sighed. "I can't believe Queens take so long to spawn-12 hours? Really."

Roger shrugged. "Well, at least those tentacle things are cool." There was a distant _snickt!_ and we glanced over at the hologram; an Enderman had wandered too close to a Spine Crawler, apparently-creepy they were, but they paid no attention to anything without eyes. "Functional, too."

I sighed and leaned back. "Well, tomorrow you figure out how the Engineering Bay works and I work on…well, expanding and finding rogue Zerg, I suppose."

He nodded. "Yeah, we probably should keep an eye out for more of those Rogue things. Well, good night."

"G'night."

It was around seven in the morning, and I had just finished a cup of bad coffee and an MRE from the Barracks when I felt something new in the hive-mind. "Oh, the Queen is ready."

_"I live to serve the Swarm."_

_'The hell!?'_

A/N: Well, that chapter went well, though not all at once like the prior two.

And so we run into the Faction Rogues, from which our intrepid heroes must win the data and strands necessary for their armies to not suck quite so much-and, speaking of Heroes, Roger finds one of his Hero Unit abilities while Jack figures out how to just ask for all of his. Yes, Psionic Infestation seems overpowered, but for it to work he has to put more power into it than the opposing unit has, and their health plays a factor as well-quite frankly, he barely got the Marauder putting all his power into the attack. Perhaps he will somehow acquire more power in the future. Or will he?

Ok, yeah, it's pretty much guaranteed he'll get more power in the future SOMEHOW.

Databases!

**Adjutant Database Updated:**

**Rogue Unit reacquired. Restoring data from Rogue backups.**

**New Unit Available: Marauder. Heavy trooper equipped with Grenade Launchers. Highly effective against light armor, and effective against heavy armor in large groups.**

**New Unit Available: Medic. Light trooper armed with rejuvenation ray. Instead of attacking, heals friendly biological units.**

**New Unit Available: Firebat. Heavy anti-infantry trooper, equipped with heavy armor and twin flamethrowers.**

**New Structure Available: Missile Turret. Anti-Air turret; launches anti-air missiles at enemy targets.**

**New Structure Available: Engineering Bay. Allows for some modification of basic units. Can transport samples to allied Research Facility.**

**New Structure Available: Research Facility. Upgraded from Engineering Bay. Functions include *SPOILERS*, *SPOILERS*, and *SPOILERS*.**

**Zerg Genetic Archive Accessed:**

**New Structure Morphed: Spawning Pool. See prior entry.**

**New Unit Morphed: Zergling. Large, raptorlike Zerg unit; serves as basic infantry. Faster than other, heavier-armored infantry at cost of durability, but is capable of tearing through neosteel with teeth and claws.**

And above we have a minor spoiler for next time. You thought you were going to get a bigger one for a minute there, didn't you?

Also, a big thanks to my reviewers for, well, reviewing! I'm on my way up in the interwebs! Woo!

Incidentally, between starting this chapter and writing this last little author's note I have gone up to seven reviews. Which is good, except it took me that long to finish the chapter. Well, I'll do my best to speed up a bit, eh?


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Hello, dear readers! …And, I suppose, other people, but there's not much point greeting people who aren't reading in writing, so…. Anyway!

I have, in reviews, been asked by a couple of people if I'm going to go for humanoid Queens. The answer is, for now, no; perhaps at a far later date, but even if I was intending to have the Queens altered in that way it will be a while before Jack has that kind of control over the Swarm's evolution. Well, not a long while, but a while. Come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure making them humanoid would count as an evolution, really; more a lateral move, if anything.

Not to say I am not giving heavy consideration to more humanoid Zerg in the future, but at least for now not the Queens.

On with the show!

**Chapter 4: Finally, Science!**

~~_Perspective:First Person, Jack~~_

Running out of the Command Center to my Hatchery, I was only half surprised to find my new Queen bowing to me with a low hiss. "Overmind. What would you have me do?"

I stared for a moment. "…Wow I was not expecting that."

The Queen looked up at me. "Overmind?"

I shook my head. "Sorry, the Swarm is…ah…somewhat hindered, at the moment, and I did not expect as high a level of independence as you have so far demonstrated." Feeling a flicker of disappointment from her, I continued. "Not a bad thing, just…surprising, more than anything. What is your name?"

She seemed genuinely confused. "I do not have one, my lord."

This was going to take a good deal of figuring out. In the meantime…. Quick reference to the mythology I'd picked up in, well, every fictional naming scheme ever, I picked one for her; who else was going to? "Then your name is Juno." I paused for another second; on the one hand, a sentient lieutenant! That could be insanely useful. On the other, a sentient Zerg, with all the species-eating, 'Not of the Swarm? You're an Enemy!' instincts that imbibed, though she didn't seem very hostile to Roger's nearby structures-more curious than anything. Still, I needed to think on this; Roger likely wouldn't have more ideas on what to do than me, but a sounding board is better than nothing. "I have matters to attend to-" Common sense and some vague Overminding instinct said _the minions don't need to know everything_. "-so for now, spread the Creep in that direction." I gestured behind the Hatchery. "If you encounter any of the random creatures that populate this area, defend yourself as you will. If you encounter organized resistance-Terran structures and soldiers like these but hostile and in a different color, Zerg not under my control-a threat you cannot deal with, or something you feel I should be made aware of, inform me immediately and get some distance from it."

Juno bowed once more. "As you command." She turned and moved to the edge of the Creep, producing a Creep Tumor before moving on to lay more; after observing her work for a moment, I turned and went to find Roger.

"So, what, the Queens are like people?" Roger raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, so far. From what I can tell she's sentient, though pretty much hardwired to work for the Swarm."

Roger blinked. "So, what she's your willing slave? That…" His eyes crossed. "How humanoid are these Queens again?"

Well, I'm not making them more so if _that's_ where his thoughts immediately go. "Not very." I reached over and smacked his thoughts out of the gutter. "Snap out of it, man, I'm having a moral crisis!"

He backed up a little and raised his hands in self-defense. "Yeesh, sorry. Well, what can you do about it?"

After a moment's thought, I sighed. "My options are kill her, which is morally wrong, let her free to start her own swarm that will attempt to kill us and anything not of the swarm she finds, which is morally wrong and will probably kill us, or keep her around as a subordinate." I reached up and rubbed at the bridge of my nose. "Morally wrong, yes, but probably the best option." I sighed. "Well, at least I probably will treat her better than a more Zerg superior would, and…" I paused as Juno's voice echoed into my head.

_"Overmind, I have encountered feral Zerg!"_

I raised a hand to wave off Roger. "Hold up, she's talking to me." _"Pull back to a safe distance, attack if pursued."_ I sent an Overlord after her and gathered up all my Zerglings; with the ones that had been hatching almost constantly, I had a sizeable force ready. I glanced up at Roger. "Juno ran into rogue Zerg." As he nodded and ran off for the Barracks, likely to grab a set of Power Armor, I centered my vision on the Overlord headed for Juno, idly noting that she had been quite busy spreading the Creep-it was still flying to her, though as I watched it came upon her crouched behind a small rocky outcropping. _"Juno, what varieties of Zerg did the enemy have? How many?"_ I just barely didn't flinch as I was hit with what must have been her memory-an…_interesting_ experience, to say the least. Still, I saw enough; she'd been ambushed by a pair of burrowed Roaches, from the looks of things, and had caught a glimpse of a truly beautiful sight as she retreated-an Evolution Chamber, resplendent in Rogue green. _"Alright, I am bringing a combat force and then we are taking that chamber for the Swarm. Stay hidden, alert me if you spot any new Zerg strains or signs of heavy reinforcements."_

_"As you command."_

I came back to myself to find Roger running up in Power Armor, followed by a large group of Marines and a handful of Medics, Marauders, and Firebats. As an afterthought, I ordered my own Infested Marauder to join my massed Zerglings-I doubted it would keep up, but if the battle went on for long we would need it and, well, it was built to take down Roaches. Roger cocked his rifle and nodded at me. "So, what's the plan?"

I shrugged. "Charge into the rogue Hive Cluster, kill things that move, kill things that don't move."

Roger frowned. "That's….not much of a plan."

"Well, when you consider how well the whole flanking maneuver thing went last time…"

He winced. "Yeah, point. So, where are we going?"

"This way!"

_'I,'_ I couldn't help but think as we charged for the enemy, _'am too damn slow.'_ This was most certainly true; between the Zerglings' natural speed and the power armor worn by Rogers' troops, I was really holding everyone back. _'Gah, if only I could move as fast as a Zergling I-wait a second…'_ I glanced to one of the Zerglings running beside me; though deadly fast running full-out, they were obligingly keeping pace with me. They could also, I was fairly certain, do so carrying a bit of weight… _'What the hell, we need to get there before the Rogues dig in.'_ I hopped onto the Zergling's back with agility that rather surprised me. The Zergling in question turned its head to look at me briefly, and I could swear it was smiling as it turned to look ahead without breaking stride. Grinning myself, I turned to look at a surprised Roger. "See you there!" I turned my attention back to the Zerglings. "Hyah!"

The look on Roger's face as I and my Zerglings sped ahead of him would forever be a priceless memory.

I had tried a flanking maneuver before. I had tried stealthily following my Zerg once before. Neither of these had been much of an option with our current forces.

Really; with just Zerglings available to me, there was just the one option.

_ZERG RUSH!_

I barely noted Juno falling into step behind the rest of the Swarm as we charged the rogue Zerg. _'This….is a terrible idea. But DAMN is it awesome!'_

Even as the Zerglings tore into the small group of enemy Zerglings and Spine Crawlers, I found myself noticing something. _'Spine crawlers, couple Spore Crawlers to the back-not now, that was messy and one-sided-spawning pool, Evolution Chamber…Huh. No Roach Warren. For that matter….'_ "Where are the Roaches-_Hell!_" I just barely managed to throw myself from my mount's back as a Roach burst from the ground and knocked it aside. "Okay, not good, but this shouldn't take much-**Psionic Infestation!**" A burst of red light, and the Roach mutated from Rogue-green to Swarm-red before turning to spew acid at my foes.

For my part, I flexed my hand, trying to figure out how much power I'd actually used. "Huh… I think I could do that a couple more times." I grinned. "Warren or no, I'm getting me some Roaches!" I charged another Psionic Infestation and ran for the battle.

A short time later, Roger came into the clearing with his forces and about tripped over himself in surprise.

I suppose we did make for an odd sight; I was sitting on the ground, my back to the new Evolution Chamber-which had steadfastly refused to obey me until I'd used Psionic Infestation on it, for some reason-with a Zergling curled up on one side of me and a Roach on the other. Juno was standing nearby, and we were talking about how to integrate the Roaches into the swarm. "Okay, get one of them into an Evolution Pit." I went crosseyed as the information on that slipped into my head; apparently I'd picked up more info on changing the swarm when I integrated the Evolution Chamber. "Hmm, takes another Queen and….wow that's a lot of resources."

Juno nodded slowly. "Indeed, it will take some time to prepare without more expansion."

"Yeah, maybe-oh, hey Roger." I turned to look at him as my infested Marauder broke from his ranks and walked over to me. "You missed all the fun."

Roger stared at me for a moment, panting, before speaking. "Dude, you jumped on a Zergling and rode straight into battle."

"Yep."

"YOU did a stupid and crazy thing."

"I suppose. Trying to be smart about it worked out so well last time, right?"

"My world is officially upside-down."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, come on. I didn't even get hit."

"Still, crazy thing-you-"

I whacked him over the head. "Is your worldview better now?"

He nodded. "Yep."

Juno simply stared at all this. "I do not understand humans, Overmind, and watching you two I sincerely hope I never do.

That evening, having left Juno several Zerglings and a few Drones to secure the new Evolution Chamber with, me and Roger turned our attention to his new Engineering Bay. On entering, we found ourselves surrounded by a vast array of mechanical arms, tools, and computers on pretty much every bit of wall and ceiling space. On one wall were capsules containing suits of Marine, Medic, Marauder, and Firebat armor-with a few more capsules next to that. Walking over, Roger started tapping on the panel next to one of the capsules. "Cool, upgrades!"

I walked over to study it; sure enough, it was showing a fancy display that reminded me of… "Hey, the armory console from the campaign. Well, except it's only showing the one unit." I leaned in, frowning. "And there's an extra button."

Roger leaned in to study it as I leaned away to, well, keep him from knocking our heads together. "Hey, yeah. 'Custom modification'?"

Lights clicked on, revealing an Adjutant whirring to life in the wall across from the door. "E-e-error. O-option unavailable. Ple-e-ease reconnect to Research Facility."

Roger groaned. "Great, I have to get something else to work all this now."

I turned to look at him, eyes wide. "Are you kidding? You can do custom modifications! Marines going to slow? Add jetpacks! Tanks not blowing enough stuff up? Add more guns! This could be brilliant!"

My 'Terran' comrade turned to raise an eyebrow at me. "…Okay, maybe. But if that's the case, won't the Rogues who have it be able to steamroll us?"

I had not, admittedly, thought of that. But…. "Actually, so far? The Adjutant didn't even know stuff you couldn't build existed, so…."

Roger grinned and brought up his control map. "Ok, SCV and….no, not there."

"Check the Engineering Bay," I said, "the Evolution Pit evolved from the Chamber, not a Drone, and if both got put in to serve pretty much the same role by presumably the same mystery guy…."

Roger tapped at the holographic screen some more. "Oh, here we go. Sweet! Hit the button and…. Insufficient room?"

I leaned in to study it; the Engineering Bay was selected and, with Roger's finger over the button, a freaking massive blue silhouette was centered over it-at least five times the size of a Command Center, and far taller. "Yeesh. Yeah, the Evolution Pit's apparently pretty massive too. I was already going to build it where that Rogue one was-it'll absorb the Spawning Pool there, but Juno's spreading the creep and moving the spine crawlers about so there'll be defenses around it."

Roger actually pouted, which I was hard-pressed not to laugh at. "Good for you. How am I supposed to upgrade this place, then?"

I pointed at his map. "Scrap the other structures over at the old Rogue one, set up shop there. This place only needs to be connected to one to do custom upgrades, right?"

He nodded. "Alright, guess that works." He started tapping away at the little map, sending a few squads of Marines and a handful of his other infantry towards the former Rogue base, giving orders for the Barracks there to move and the other structures to be scrapped with efficiency that frankly shocked me. "Give the order, and…..takes three SCVs? ….And how many tons of-and gold!? Diamond!? And-four days!?"

I patted him on the shoulder consolingly. "Yeah, I know. Little less time on the Evolution Pit, but that's not counting how long it takes to hatch that specific queen, and…well, let's just say by the time I've gathered enough biomass to build the Evolution Pit it's going to be in the middle of some flatlands instead of a forest."

He sighed. "Well, better get to it." He hit the button, and then came the waiting.

The inexorable waiting.

A/N: And here is chapter 4! Sorry it took so long, folks.

Not the best of chapters, I don't think-it didn't quite flow during the writing process-but EXPOSITION! And future SCIENCE!

…Incidentally, pretty soon we will probably be having a temporary lack of action; they are getting to the point where it's their large armies against small Rogue factions built around specific units they'll have to win, and they are getting to the point where they can delegate a good deal of the action-where they have to, really, as they have a lot of ground to cover (in Creep, in Jack's case) and not much of a transport system yet. Besides which, I'll be skimming a lot of the building up once you lot understand how it's done.

No database today, as Roger did not get any actual new toys.

**Zerg Genetic Archive Accessed:**

**New Unit Morphed: Queen. Sentient 'officer' of the Swarm, capable of commanding small hive clusters with a high degree of efficiency. Abilities include ranged attack with spines, planting Creep Tumors which spread the Creep, and utilizing a unique regenerative pheromone which heals Zerg units and causes Hatcheries, [UNKNOWN], and [UNKNOWN] to spawn additional Larva in a short time.**

**New Structure: Evolution Chamber. Generates situational upgrades for Zerg units, dependent on genetics stored in overall Zerg strands. New mutations can be generated, but require connection to an Evolution Pit.**

And, since you find out next chapter, the Evolution Pit.

**New Structure Morphing: Evolution Pit. Queen unit is integrated into Evolution Chamber during metamorphosis. On completion, Queen unit mind is used to spin strands acquired from enemies at Overmind's direction. With Evolution Pit morphed, various strands from enemies and prey can be assimilated into the Swarm through Evolution Chambers or the Pit itself, and therein morphed to create variants of extant Zerg strains or entirely new strains-though the latter takes a great deal of time and resources for experimentation.**

Which, incidentally, is basically what the Research Facility does, though it does a lot more work from scratch. Of course, Jack will for now be doing a lot more playing with the New Unit functionality than Roger. This is because, in a situation where a tank is not enough, Jack's thoughts go 'Make Better Tank!' while Roger's go "Make More Tank!"

He will use them more eventually, though, and custom modifications will be oh so much fun-in fact, I'm taking ideas, though they may or may not be used and I can't guarantee any ideas used will be used soon.

By the way, I received a review today before finishing up this chapter from an anonymous guest that said I'd be lynched if I didn't hurry up with the chapter. Do I need to say what this means, people?

I have enough readers to constitute a lynching! Woo!

And with that thought, one last question to our readers; just out of curiosity, were you searching Starcraft or Minecraft stuff when you found this? I'm honestly surprised this has gotten as much attention as it has in the crossovers section, though I may have underestimated its popularity.

Read and review, folks!


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